


Le Cygne

by SouthernBird



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Ballerina, Ballerina!Lance, Ballet, Botching of Ballet Terminology, Creepy, Dancing, Implied Murder, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Mafia!Galra, Mob family, Past Violence, mafia, unedited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-05-30
Packaged: 2018-11-06 16:25:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11039898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthernBird/pseuds/SouthernBird
Summary: The host departs the stage, the light of a few lanterns fading out to create the ambiance of darkness wholly before there’s just nothing.Oh, wait, no, there it is, the soft plucks of a harp reaching his ears with the most delicate of melodies, solo in the introduction before there’s a blue glow that barely veils the stage, and then— oh, then—.A swan, the loveliest of birds, slowly glides across the stage as its arms gracefully curve for the illusion of methodical wings swaying into a cold wind.-Based on Fishwrites' / Jaspurrlock's Ballerina!Lance/Mafia!Galra AU.





	Le Cygne

**Author's Note:**

> I do so very much love ballet and the challenge that comes with writing ballet into a story, so when [Jaspurrlock](http://jaspurrlock.tumblr.com/) posted this [VERY NSFW](http://jaspurrlock.tumblr.com/post/161028274182/zancelot-mob-au-where-lance-is-a) piece with Lancelot/Larkon, I just... I had this vision. Oops. 
> 
> Edit: I've been informed that Fishwrites is the originator of the idea, so I wanted to be sure to give credit where it's due! 
> 
> For those curious, the piece that Lance dances is known as the [The Dying Swan / Le Cygne](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82kWFGttaX8&t=59s).

It is nothing more than a formal local affair at the theatre that draws the heads of scandalous crime groups to a display of the arts on a fair spring night. Those in attendance have dressed in their starched collars and finely tailored suits, their lovely partners in dashing jewels and low cut fineries while tickets are flashed at the stand with a sense of honor above all else. Strange that it is for crime lords that find a certain expertise in their own art form of murderous riots and thieving ventures to appreciate the arts of others, of music and of dance, but the matter is all the same; be on best behavior. 

 

To be heartless is not a truly notorious factor amongst the rivaling mafias of the city, but for one night, they all collectively find themselves nodding tensely across the gala of arts while finding their seats in the extravagant auditorium, swathed in red velvet curtains draped from the balcony seatings and warm light glow that dimly illuminate the staircases. 

 

The Galra mafia has presented themselves, of course, despite being the most dastardly of the city. They have arrived with only their high ranks, Zarkon and the infamous bastard of a son himself having been escorted to the best of the balconies to observe the fantastic talents of the youths that derive their happiness from the pain that is practice, practice, _practice_ until their fingers bleed, practice until their joints ache from constant repetition. 

 

While he patiently awaits the spectacle of ripe young adults that are slowly breaking their own spirits over their passions, Lotor settles back into the plush back of the wing back chair, a special request of the Galra family themselves for the theatre. For all that his father is, a deeply settled rage that is a hurricane churning beneath the exterior of cold precision, the bastard has a soft spot for the talents that want to live and to survive chiming along the piano keys or to pliè at the barre for hours and hours. It’s a rumor that the old shit found a love in a dancer once, was once enraptured by her grace as she jumped across the stage as though she were a bird to take flight. 

 

Pity his mother is only a grave marker and a picture on the wall of the theatre; pity that Lotor would never know his mother, lost to the tragedy of suspicious car wrecks and jealous bickerings. Still, he supposes that it is in his best interest to attend these endeavors as he may find a pretty thing to corrupt, to break and to mold pretty pure things that are just begging to be sought after. 

 

Once the lights dim and the host of the exhibition has welcomed the audience with a fair round of applause, there is already a dread of boredom that creeps along his shoulders to press down. A pianist that tries to woo the hearts of murderers and of adulterers with the piano compilations of Mozart’s playful “Alla Turca” to Beethoven’s somber “Moonlight Sonata.” Next is a contemporary dancer that jumps with charisma unbound, that pounds her feet in a powerful accompaniment with the drums of her percussionists, leaving a sense of awe even in the eyes of an heir to a bloodied throne. 

 

It’s a long list of… attempted entertainment, mostly barrages of musical numbers or dances that practically make no sense. There is all skill imaginable in the cusp of the theatre, the auditorium echoing with a myriad of pieces that continue to irritate Lotor’s senses due to their changing tones. For one moment, he is supposed to feel sorrowful, and then another, overjoyed with the heralding of providence; he can hardly help but fidget despite his father’s sedated expression, despite the head of the Galra mafia sitting with nothing short of the rigidity of respect. 

 

Regardless, he is an heir that should act as such, but the unfathomable pit of boredom is a dark place he is quite knowledgeable of when it comes to traipsing to affairs that will not produce the adrenaline rushes that he so longs to feel. It’s an addiction, really, something that drugs his senses, buzzes in his head while the only weight that bears him down to earth is the handle of an axe or bat since he is one that prefers to bludgeon skulls in with nothing more than brute force. 

 

But, brute force does not facilitate any kind of cordiality, so stiff yet ruffled Lotor will be as the last occurrence he desires is Zarkon himself slamming his head into the balcony railing.  

 

Most undesirable, he thinks. 

 

Once another slew of acts have been muddled through, the host comes out to the stage again to the applause of the crowd, waving his hand to signal a need for silence as he expresses gratitude most fair before telling them that there is just one last performance, a bit of a unique circumstance that will enchant the hearts of all that are there tonight in the theatre. 

 

Lotor scoffs; Zarkon’s eyes cut over to him, and that is enough to straighten his back. 

 

The host departs the stage, the light of a few lanterns fading out to create the ambiance of darkness wholly before there’s just _nothing_. 

 

Oh, wait, no, there it is, the soft plucks of a harp reaching his ears with the most delicate of melodies, solo in the introduction before there’s a blue glow that barely veils the stage, and then— oh, then—. 

 

A swan, the loveliest of birds, slowly glides across the stage as its arms gracefully curve for the illusion of methodical wings swaying into a cold wind.

 

Accompanied with the bittersweet harp is now a doleful cello, the timber of the bow on the strings an absolute travesty of life itself because there Lotor sits, ever so moved by a sound that is as heartbreaking as it is subliminal. He cannot breathe, very air of his putrid, smoke stained lungs escaping him from a sight that he can only liken to watching the final moments of an ethereal swan that once bathed in the ponds of moonbeams. 

 

(If he were to give a moment of his time to his father, he would find very much a similar pose, only with not as slack of a jaw and with a tighter grip on the arm rests— it would be the same as a dusk from ages ago when a swan of another flair flew to him in a parade of fouettes.)

 

It’s weightless, this dancer, this beauty that glistens upon a reflection of a stage that is more of a lake, an abyssal mirror of black that catches each tap en pointe, each gentle sway of arms, even replicates the gentlest of quivers of the pearlescent tulle. 

 

Lotor’s heart is clutched tight, taken from his very chest in a methodical half-rotation that reveals a facade that had to be stolen from Aphrodite’s sea foam to be molded into an ever so lovely masterpiece to call upon the gazes and the tongues of hopeless men. Yes, his gaze, his gaze cannot even break from the swan for to turn away would be a sin so great he would bear the sins of the world to atone for such. 

 

No, no, let him stare, let him desire, allow the dance whisk him away to darker cove where there is cold, but there also is heat, where he can hide this treasure so that his fingers could dig into the down of ivory feathers so he could rip, _rip_ away at purity, to strip a swan of its innocence, leave bloodied plumes and splayed legs in a centerpiece of his own proficiency.

 

He— _he_ glides, the movement of bourreé deceptive in that as effortless as it may be. Does the boy even open his eyes, does he even let those undeserving see into the fixtures of eyes that would steal the very souls of the audience to claim as his own? How merciful he must be, to hinder the spell that would pilfer away the souls of less worthy beings to hide in the glass bottles of the sea floor by keeping those eyes closed. 

 

Yet, oh yet, save him— no, save both of them, save his poor stunned father, save them from the sweetest of visions that cascades himself in an ethereal shifting of white with only the faintest hue of blue along his glimmering skin. His arms, his _wings_ , are near boneless with each flutter, with each cycle of dying flight while his bourreé drifts along the blackness of his lake. 

 

Then, a downward sweep of a torso before an arch of a back leads into an arabesque that is so perfect, so revealing of sinuous legs that his admirers must be salivating, or no, that must leave mouths so dry from the anticipation of the story being unfolded in the most woeful of ways. This is the placid descent of a dying swan to his deathbed, a final flight from a proud bloom to nothing more than a withering lily floating along the surface of a shadow lake. 

 

A droop, a graceful ease onto a knee, and Lotor feels his heart break, feels as though the knee uses his heart to cushion, to take some of the burden of death from this celestial creature’s drape along the mirror— will he finally rest? Will this swan let death wrap bony fingers along that curvature of neck, let death press its thumb along the vulnerable swell of throat to choke? 

 

His father has not even taken one breath, but gasps slightly when the swan, the blue-tinged divinity wrapped in tulles of pure white, raises himself up, a defiant flight against the scythe along his nape. The resistance against the descent into the depths of a watery grave is a fruitless endeavor as evident in the waning resilience of the bourreé, as evident in the wavering flutters of the dancer’s arms traipsing into the darkness before death attempts one more like to clip those wings. 

 

Like a white rose losing its petals to the withering of a first autumn frost, so too falls the swan, a fragile declivity that instills a sense of loss that nearly chokes a witness that has bathed himself in the blood of his victims, that has stained his own hands in a rage of offense because that is simply all he has ever known to do. 

 

Lotor is enchanted by the proverbial end of a life that he has never touched him until this night, is in love not with the idea of of beauty, but the idea of stealing the whiteness of purity from the dancer. 

 

The lights, dark suddenly, leave the room with no illumination as the dancer concedes into the last plucks of a sullen harp. The room ruptures with the sound of applause so fierce that even Zarkon, a man of few words, has risen from his seat to clap as boisterously with the rest, to let the hollows of his baritone authority speak out with, “ _bravissimo!”_

 

The lamps light into warm fullness, expunging the dimness that just seconds ago wove the ambiance of the death of a swan, to reveal the dancer breathing harsh yet smiling with such brilliance that it erupts a desire in Lotor to rise, to applaud with the others because his eyes are set on that pretty dancer, that sweet blue, named so delicately for the eyes of ocean that are scouring the audience with such awe before he kindly meanders into a révérence to convey with his movement what he cannot convey in words then. 

 

It’s a lasting stitch, the final moment that embellishes the curvatures of a ripe body that has— hopefully— never known touch, has never known the darker sins of a bedroom with a man (or men, if his father’s eyes are any forewarning into a possessive war that they may be led to with the prize being a pure sweetness being taken to bed). Lotor feels a torrid ink flow through his veins that will pound his heart, will throb his desires, will raise the haunches of a hungry, lusting monster that wants to know the pleasures from between the legs of a singing swan.

 

With one last bow from the dancer, Lotor glances over at his father who is already calculating, who is already pressing his thumb to the name of the most precious treasure to be presented to them so gorgeously on this night: 

 

_Lance McClain._


End file.
